


what she wants

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Drunken Kissing, F/M, Fingerfucking, First Time, Future Fic, Office Sex, Unresolved Romantic Tension, not Lincoln Campbell friendly, post ep 3x13, reference to Mack/Yo-Yo, sort of Mack/Bobbi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:00:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6397462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I didn't really want to stop drinking, " she says.</p><p>(Post-"Parting Shot" Coulson-centric)</p>
            </blockquote>





	what she wants

He drives back with Mack, alone in the car.

He figured the man would appreciate the privacy - other might try to talk to him, comfort him, or start a premature remembrance of their friends, like a wake for the living.

It’s easier to concentrate on that loss than his own. It’s easier to focus on the road and on respecting Mack’s silence than studying the many ways in which he could have prevented the situation, in which this is his responsibility - his failure.

Funny thing is he spent most of his life being told this was the way things should be. The agent didn’t matter, only SHIELD did. It had never sat well with him, but only in retrospect. He was taught that the man was supposed to sacrifice for the organization. But then he died and came back, and then he met Daisy and got his own team and started thinking it should be the other way around. Isn’t SHIELD supposed to protect everybody? That includes its agents. It has to.

He has to respect Bobbi’s and Hunter’s choice but the whole drive home - a little chunk less home now - he keeps turning possibilities in his head, trying to find loopholes he knows are not there, trying to _fix this_ as he knows he should.

 

+

 

By the time he comes back he’s tired but over alert and Daisy is in his office, pouring herself a glass of scotch.

“I didn’t really want to stop drinking,” she says as Coulson closes the door behind him. “Join me?” she offers.

It’s his office, his scotch (his failure?) but her offer.

Coulson grabs the bottle and drinks from it, not bothering to use a glass, wiping liquid from his lips and chin. The gesture would normally provoke a raised and amused eyebrow from Daisy but not tonight.

“So they’re gone, right? For good.”

She down the whole glass.

For Daisy the worst nightmare is losing people, and she just lost two more. Coulson understands.

“This is my fault,” she says.

He suddenly feels incredibly tired and almost annoyed at her.

“How can this possibly be your fault?”

She puts the glass down with a loud thud.

“This whole Inhuman mess, the reason why we’re all jumping hoops for the President and around people like Malick, the reason Bobbi and Hunter got into this in the first place… none of this would have happened if I hadn’t caused the outbreak.”

Coulson steps up to face her.

“And if you hadn’t dropped those crystals in the ocean… a lot of people would be dead,” he reminds her.

“Yeah,” Daisy admits, sounding defeated. Then, surprisingly, she rests one warm hand on Coulson’s chest. “It’s like I can’t win,” she tells him, bringing her mouth against his.

There’s nothing hesitant about it and Daisy immediately grabs him by the jacket and keeps his body against hers. Coulson stumbles against the kiss, not regretting it at all, kissing back, tasting alcohol and sadness, he fumbles to keep himself balanced, one hand on the desk, the left one curled around Daisy’s waist all of the sudden. It’s the first time his prosthetic feels like a hand to him - capable of something else other than tricks, other than being a tool or an advantage or a weapon. He’s relieved he doesn’t have to hold Daisy with the same hand he used to kill Ward. Ward - another loss both he and Daisy suffered intimately.

He could think about what he could have done to prevent that one, just like Daisy is no doubt thinking how Bobbi and Hunter are her responsibility - Coulson can feel it in the way she breathes, almost angry, against his mouth, between kisses - but instead he closes his eyes and keeps kissing her, touching her as she sits on the edge of his desk and brackets his body with her legs.

It’s in that moment, when Daisy presses herself against him selfishly, taking his mouth like that. that Coulson realizes, against everything he _thought_ she meant to him before, that he is in love with Daisy.

She is grabbing his arm, nails digging almost painfully into his wrist, and guiding it between her legs. He curls his fingers around her, rubbing her through her jeans just as she curls her body against the gesture, moaning so low and soft Coulson can barely hear it.

He kisses the top of her shoulders, the collar of her t-shirt and the strap of her bra, realizing she hasn’t even taken off her jacket yet, coming straight from the bar and the trip back and goodbyes and more losses. He wants to slow everything down and comfort her somehow, but Daisy wants speed and hunger and hands and he wants whatever she wants.

What does she want?

He stops his lips over her collarbone.

“What about…?” he can barely make the name out of his mouth, out of shame but not exactly respect for the man. “... Lincoln?”

Daisy stops, like suddenly sobered up.

Then she lets out a low, ugly laughter.

“I… I had forgotten about him.”

She grabs Coulson’s hand by the wrist and pulls him away, extricating herself from his embrace and stumbling away from his desk.

Walking out of his office in a heartbeat.

 

+

 

The bar is packed - it’s game night and it’s one of those places, it’s cheap and slightly seedy, but seedy has always looked good on Bobbi. It’s easy for him to slip through the cracks - his face will not send a country into red alert, unlike some in his team - and Bobbi looks like she belongs too, t-shirt sleeves rolled up and skin glistening with sweat, saving him a seat, and _three_ bears already in front of her.

The place is public, safe, very loud. Perfect for what they’re doing. One of the first things SHIELD teaches you, hiding in plain sight. In hindsight that might have been Hydra doctrine. A good chunk of his life still makes Coulson uncomfortable because of this. 

It’s been a handful of months but she also looks _the same_ , Coulson has the feeling that they saw each other a couple of days ago and she’s just taking a weekend break from SHIELD. It doesn’t feel clandestine. It doesn’t feel mournful. For a moment he forgets how much he’s missed her.

He sits down and she pushes a bottle towards him.

“Australian beer?” he jokes. “I’m not sure I should.”

“It’s good,” Bobbi tells him. “Hunter knows a girl here.”

Coulson tries it.

It’s good.

Maybe it’s the company.

“You know this whole disowning us deal works much better if we don’t see each other, right?”

He smiles.

The way things are out there in the world being seeing with a disgraced ex-agent is not the worst thing that can happen to him.

“I’m here because I’m sure you’ve seen the news,” he tells her.

“Do you need help?”

So much, he thinks. Bobbi and Hunter would be such assets right now, more than that they’d be lifelines in a situation where Coulson can count the people he trusts with his fingers. Her eyes light up at the possibility that he might accept her offer, but he can’t do that to her and Hunter.

“I just wanted to let you know Daisy is doing fine,” he says, because he’s here for them, not for himself. “We have her back in this.”

“I imagined,” Bobbi says, pretending she wouldn’t worry.

Daisy is not exactly doing fine but then again, under these new laws and regulations, no one is. Seeing Bobbi again reminds Coulson of the night they lost her and Hunter and what happened between him and Daisy in his office. He never brought it up with her, even though he could see she was unhappy with Lincoln - but he figured that part was none of his business, actually.

Bobbi has her eyes on the obscenely big flat screen above the bar, feigning interest. 

“You must have a million things to do other than come to the other side of the world, just to appease our worries,” she comments, not looking at Coulson.

“I thought I owed you,” he replies.

He owes them far too much. Not being able to figure out a way to keep them, for a starter. Not helping them with whatever they are doing now, which from the looks of it - he’s still the Director of SHIELD, he knows stuff - it’s adequately dangerous. It was their call but _he_ left them on their own.

“That’s how I got you,” Bobbi says, turning to him with a smirk. “When I was working under Gonzalez’s orders and you didn’t suspect me. _This_ is why you fell for it.”

Coulson gives her an apologetic smile, like it’s his fault in the first place for being so gullible and not Bobbi’s for betraying his trust. A coup will make you re-think a lot of things but it never made him see Bobbi in a different,less favorable light. Maybe that’s what she’s talking about. And maybe if he was more skeptical about people he wouldn’t be here now, meeting in secret, because he wouldn’t have failed his agents. And maybe the mess back at home could have been prevented. SHIELD is supposed to protect everybody, but he should have realized some people needed more protecting than others. And _he did_ , just not in time.

“How’s Mack doing?” Bobbi asks, breaking the silence.

“Good, good, he’s…” Coulson wonders if he should tell, but decides Mack would probably want her to know. “He and Elena are dating, actually.”

A warm smile spreads through Bobbi’s face.

“Yeah? Good for him,” she says, taking a sip. “Not to say I’m not a bit jealous but eh…” she shrugs. “I missed my chance. You shouldn’t miss yours.” Always sounding wiser than anyone else in the room.

“I think I missed my chance with Mack, too, definitely,” Coulson jokes.

Bobbi rolls her eyes.

“Finish your beer, Phil.”

He does.

 

+

 

Daisy knows he’s gone to visit Bobbi. Not the kind of thing he can hide from her. But she’s gone most days of the war that no one is really calling war. Coulson knows whatever there was between her and Lincoln is over, but he also knows she didn’t end it.

Mack doesn’t know about his trip and in respect to Bobbi he guesses he shouldn’t tell him.

He is on the couch, distractedly playing some shoot ‘em up. The down time between catastrophes are the worst these days and Coulson fills them with irrelevant paperwork in case some day the world becomes sane again. But some days the paperwork runs out. And some days you come home jet-lagged and with the taste of surprisingly good Australian beer in your mouth, the scent of a lost friend’s perfume on you.

He’s too tired to come up with his own distractions tonight, so he tries Mack’s way, sitting by his side on the couch.

“So how does this work?” Coulson asks, grabbing the other controller.

“You’ve never played videogames?” Mack asks, incredulous.

“Of course I have,” he replies. “Just not lately. When people talked to me about Call of Duty I pretended to know what they were talking about.”

He is exaggerating for humor. He has played Call of Duty. Just not much else.

“You just, you know…” Mack gestures.

“Shoot?”

“Pretty much.”

“Is it relaxing?”

“You tell me.”

“Okay,” Coulson starts playing. “Just don’t hold back because I’m your boss and you cut off my hand.”

Mack snorts, implying he would never hold back on a game.

They spend a while on it, in silence, and Coulson is very bad, almost to the point where his pride would blame it on his prosthetic.

“Sir…” Mack starts, way too formal for what they have all been through together.

“Yes?” Coulson doesn’t tear his gaze from the screen and the zombie soldiers coming his way.

“I know where you went today,” the other man says.

“Oh?”

“Daisy told me.”

“And how did she…?” he starts asking but it’s a moot point. He knew already, and the how is not important right now. Daisy knows everything.

There’s a beat. Coulson is not sure what to expect as reaction - Mack is one of the most unpredictable people in his life. He’s not sure if he might consider it a betrayal, that he went see his friend without telling him.

“I’m glad you did,” Mack says. “Thank you.”

“I figured it was only fair,” he tells him.

He could never find _fairness_ in the SHIELD handbook, and for a long time that was okay. 

Then he died.

Then he -

 

+

 

Daisy is in his office pouring herself a glass of scotch.

A victory drink, he guesses.

A Pyrrhic victory, but victory nonetheless.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks.

Daisy nods, holding out the bottle.

This time he decides to use a glass.

They clink glasses and all, almost official.

They celebrate in easy silence. Coulson counts the days of legal battles and public opinion pressure it took for the new law protecting Inhuman identities to pass. For the old anti-Inhuman laws to crumble; he knows they lived under them only for a few months but they feel old laws to him, like he finds it hard to remember how they lived before the fear, before the war.

Daisy is in her field suit, because victory doesn’t mean the work is over. There’s more work now that the whole thing is over (but it’s never over, is it? That’s what Jiaying had taught Daisy and it was a good lesson too).

He watches her gaze into her drink like she wants some question answered from it.

It turns out it’s not from the drink at al.

“Why didn’t you ever ask me about that night?” she asks Coulson.

“What night?”

“ _Coulson_.”

“You were drunk. You didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“You could have asked.”

“I didn’t want to press.”

“Yeah but _why_ didn’t you ask?”

“I didn’t want to hear that you regretted it,” he replies truthfully. He doesn’t think he could bear it, being someone Daisy thinks about with shame.

“I had never done anything like that,” she says, sounding unexpectedly amused.

“No, sorry, I wasn’t _judging_.”

“No, I know, I know.”

They both smile awkwardly and return their full attention to their drink for a moment.

“I didn’t leave him, he left me, it’s pathetic,” she explains. She doesn’t owe it to Coulson, but if she wants him to hear it he will. “I hold on to people, I do that. Even when I don’t want to. I can’t let go.”

Coulson touches her arm for a moment.

“That’s understandable,” he tells her.

“I should have ended it after that night, I don’t why I didn’t.”

Coulson is bothered by the idea that she feels like she couldn’t choose after that. It was nothing really. “You didn’t have to,” Coulson says.

To his surprise Daisy smiles at that. She doesn’t look troubled or regretful about it.

“That was a big thing for me. You might not realize but it was. All my life I thought that someone wanting me was the whole point of it all. Why would anyone risk that by going after someone else? I never understood that. I was of course ignoring a factor.”

“What factor?” he asks.

“What _I_ wanted,” Daisy replies. “That was the biggest shock of the night. Not that I was contemplating cheating on a guy I was with for wrong reason anyway. But the fact that what - who I wanted mattered.”

“Of course it matters.”

“I wanted you.”

Coulson lets the words linger in the air for a moment, enjoying it.

“You still do?” he asks.

“I do. If you…”

“I should have come to you sooner.”

She nods, her eyes a bit too big like she’s about to cry. “Yeah,” she says in a low voice. “I wish you’d…”

She presses one hand to his chest like she did that night and Coulson kisses her, wanting to be the one who makes that move, who takes that responsibility, this time. Daisy holds on to people, he wants her to know he is reaching out to her, that she doesn’t need to.

His kiss is gentle until Daisy runs her fingers through his hair and pulls him down and he gives her what she wants.

Her hands are everywhere - his hair, inside his jacket, cupping his ass - and Coulson plays desperate against her mouth, sucking hard on her bottom lip and drawing teeth across her throat.

“Is this okay?” he asks in a whisper, more a breathed question mark than actual words.

She nods, her nose brushing against the line of his jaw. Coulson drops another kiss on her neck and starts working the zipper of her field suit.

He slips his hand under the fabric while Daisy kisses his forehead, wrinkled in concentration, and she presses a smile to it when she notices this.

This is what he had meant to do that other night, he thinks, pushing her underwear aside and one finger into her. She loops her arms around his back, twisting them into his jacket. Her name spills from his mouth, and it makes her wet, Coulson quickly adding a second finger.

This is what he had wanted that night - in victory (even a reduced, Pyrrhic one), not in loss.

She comes around his fingers, clenching hard, and Coulson thinks he can feel the sensation reverberating through the walls of the office, but maybe he’s just imagining things now. At least using her powers no longer makes Daisy a de-facto criminal, he thinks.

“Coul- _Phil_ ,” she corrects herself, like she has to force herself to a more personal version of his name. He doesn’t mind for now, _Coulson_ has always sound intimate to him when she’s said it. “Are you…?” she asks, bringing her hand flat between his legs.

Coulson hopes the strained hopeful purr he makes sounds like a “Yes” to her.

He nods and tries to help her out of the clothes, wiping his fingers across Daisy’s stomach in a way that makes her gasp. The suit is kind of impossible to get rid off so she just pulls it down her thighs and turns around, bending over the desk. Coulson would prefer to see her face and he hopes he’ll have another chance at this but this is what she wants right now. He draws one tender hand over Daisy’s naked back as he works his own jeans down. She gives him a hungry look over her shoulder.

He’s careful and quick with her.

He puts his fingers under her cheek and makes her turn her face, kissing it as he pushes inside her. Daisy makes a wonderful pleased sound of sheer connection to another human being and Coulson can’t help but bury his face and her name into the back of her head, her hair that’s grown so long in these past months of pain and hopelessness.

So late in the game he realizes, for the second time, that he’s in love with her.

“More,” Daisy says and he’s not sure he can give her anything more than that, than just being in love with her. Then he realizes she is talking about _now_ , this moment between them, and he pulls back and pushes into her again, trying to get deeper each time, digging the fingers of his prosthetic into her hip and listening to her contented moans when he does,

He comes, resting his cheek between her shoulderblades.

When he pulls out Daisy slips through his hands, becoming liquid under him. He helps her up, kissing her hair and tugging at her so she turns, wanting to be face to face again. It all had been too quick. He’s the one thinking “more” now.

She kisses him, lazily and for a while, afterwards, drawing a heavy mouth across his pliant lips.

He zips her suit back up to the neck. He hasn’t taken off his jacket.

“We should probably go clean up a bit,” he says.

Daisy nods. Her cheeks are flushed almost red and Coulson feels a bit embarrassed at how fucking juvenile and hopeless that makes him feel.

“Feel like seeing me later?” she asks him.

Coulson wraps his hand around her leg, squeezing.

“Very much,” he replies. “Do you still want me?”

She covers his hand with hers, tapping her fingers softly, playful, against Coulson’s knuckles.

“Very much,” she tells him.


End file.
